The Transport Theme, undertaken in partnership with Transport Scotland, has the primary objective of developing a mechanism to coordinate Scotland’s academic expertise that supports research and innovation into zero emissions mobility that benefits industry, government, and the academic sector.
As of 2017, the transport sector accounted for 37% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions, 69% of which come from road transport. While the Scottish Government has made significant investments to support the uptake of low and ultra-low emission vehicles, both in terms of financial support for purchases and expanded access to recharging points, challenges remain in fully removing emissions from all modes of transport sector in an efficient and equitable manner.
In order to secure the environmental, social, and economic benefits from the decarbonisation of transport, Scotland’s supply chains needs to adapt and respond to the emerging demand for new mobility products and services within Scotland and overseas.
Scotland has established supply chains in the transport sector including automotive, maritime and rail which are complemented by considerable strengths in other areas that are becoming increasingly relevant to the decarbonisation of transport, such as energy and digital technology.
However, strategic interventions are needed in order to support the entry of new innovative businesses into these supply chains while helping established businesses to transform their business model, operations, and skills to embrace a future of zero emissions mobility, and make a contribution to real and lasting change. The Transport Theme aims to build on the success of the ETP programme and enable greater coordination of, and access to, Scotland’s academic strengths relating through:
- Facilitating pooling of academic knowledge and expertise to enable co-ordinated research activities, leading to new areas of innovation.
- Driving research activities to leverage wider socio-economic impacts.
- Expanding the ETP Knowledge Exchange Network (KEN) framework to accelerate knowledge exchange between academia and enterprises to stimulate innovation in the ZEM Sector.
- Supporting activities that bring the different industry and academic communities together in events/forums to enable collaboration.
- Supporting an annual programme of zero emission mobility innovative projects between academia, SMEs and OEMs utilising the zero-emission mobility academic network’s engagement fund.
- Providing a gateway for contacts made through the directorate’s international programmes to Scotland’s ZEM R&D community.